User blog:FirnCN-15/Star Dragon Deck Types
This is a Work In Progress. I'll get back to this and finish it off. Hey all my fellow buddyfighters! So with the introdution of all the new Impact Monsters and such Star Dragon World has become a very strange animal to deal with. There's all sort of different options which makes some seriously interesting decks to create. Let's start with the original SDW. There were two types of decks at first: Jackknife and Variable Cord. Both decks are powerful to this day but both had glaring flaws. Jackknife was expensive to get and if you didn't get off the right combo for Variable Cord, you're stuck in a massive rut with a less effective main unit. But with those flaws out of the way, The original SDW decks were pretty good. Not a lot in the way of budget decking which was a pain for the deckbuilders like me but hey, we can't all be rich, right? So first, Jackknife. Well there's Star Guardian, Jackknife which is great. Search any card out of the drop zone and then make it soul. Any SDW player knows that the ideal target in the soul is Dragonarms, preferably something that makes use of Jack's stats (5000/3/6000) like Elgar Cannon, Cavalier (bearing in ming that Strength didn't exist at this point) and Vogel to make use of it's defense. Other great things about Jack is the combos that can be used. Crossnize allows for multiple cards in the soul such as Artiliger and Cavalier to destroy monsters with soulguards and other such abilities. There are just too many different things which can be done with Jackknife. It's super powerful hence the cost to buy him. The H-Boosters gave us other support for Jackknife too in the form of Cosmo Saber, Gold Ritter with it's ability to search for Jackknife and to gain critical for 3 or more soul monsters which is easy to do in SDW. This is a really good combo if you can pull it off. The other item for this is Radiant Saber, Providence which removes the formentioned Vogel from the deck, freeing up space for other better cards. The extra attack power for all cards in the souls of monsters works well with Jack and many other cards too in SDW. Then there's Aster. This card takes jack to the next level and makes the weapons ten times better especially if you fill up the soul of Jackknife before putting Aster over this giving a minimum of two soul before any other crossnizing that you do. This is definetly nice considering the other Dragon arms that only work with Jackknife. It certainly makes him over powered. Either way there's no denying that Jackknife SDW is super powerful, but expensive. The cheaper alternate is Variable Cord (7000/3/2000) which is really powerful... if you can get it to work. On the positive side, all the cards minus Cord are fairly cheap in comparison to Jackknife. The idea is to call the three bouncers/bodyguards, Brun Deus, Akision; Azul, Tesslamagna; and Vert Deus, Matrix. Draw three cards a turn and then when you have a lot of Dragonarms in hand, call Variable Cord and fill his soul up to crazy amounts. Ideally you'd run four Elgar Cannon and four Divisigator to give it a crazy amount of criticals, defense and attack. The addition of soulguard means that he'll stay there at least a few turns with minimum of souls. Ideally most players would put him in centre and use all cards in hand to fill up the soul. From then on it's a lot of attacks and a hard time to destroy him as well. The massive monster in the centre full of soulguards allows for time to fill up the hand with shields and other useful spells. This is pretty good but bear in mind that it can fall apart when you fight control decks or burn decks. Also if you lose the bodyguards and such you'll have a less effective Cord. So now this leads us on to the Triple-D SDW decks. The Cross Dragoner Trial Deck came with some decent support and started the new trend of SDW. The deck came with some good Dragonarms such as Slowing, for gauge gain and Strength for power and Penetrate. Only catch is that the centre must be wide open to use the effects. Not an issue really if you are playing a Triple Offensive Manuveur Deck. I'm not really a fan of that strategy because of OTK decks and such. The problem in the Trial Deck was solved by the set of Vogel that gave move to the monsters. This wasn't too bad considering that the monsters in the deck had abilities which activated when placed on the left or right, such as Four Quasar, Stein Cross and Star Dragoner, Straggler. These monsters were definietly a good couple of monsters but the issue with these monsters was Star Dragoner, Blazer. A size one with move seemed very repetitive which also meant that Vogel was a worthless card in the deck. That said Blazer could be taken out to place a few monsters or other Dragonarms in. And recently a lot of good Dragonarms had been released in Buddy Allstars+, Mikado Evolution, and Terror of the Inverse Omni Lords. There were a lot of options for cards to replace. That was the problem for SDW. The Trial Decks should have staples not redudancies. The item, Single Star, Neometeor, was a very good change though considering that they were powerful and able to destroy most monsters with the ability to gain 3000 attack if you have a card in the soul of a Neodragon (not hard) The 2 critical made it that much more powerful for all SDW players. And let's not forget the Impact Monster, Jackknife, Dragoner Wall. Putting him on top of a monster on the field which had a lot of cards in the soul during the final phase giving a potential card with three critical and at least a double soulguard and the potential to move, gain gauge and penetrate. It's pretty good and you get four too. Well there was some decent support for SDW but now there was the big question. What support would they get next? What type of decks could be built? Would they be as expensive as the old stuff? And Bushiroad gave us a quick answer! No! Looking at the new set of cards in Unleash! Impact Monster!! it was obvious that Bushiroad wanted to keep the good stuff good and the essentials easier to get. So to start with the RRRs are really strong and the new SDW seems to be focused on keeping mosters alive rather than giving all sorts of effects. This is interesting but more on that later. Size 3, The Over, EX Dimension (8000/2/6000) is the perfect example of this as it's call cost is to put up to three monsters from your drop zone into the soul. Interesting isn't it? It's ability is to discard one of those souls to gain Penetrate or Double Attack. Not bad I guess but what does this have to do with the new type of SDW deck? The answer can be found in the new Dragonarms of the set. Dragonarms, Onebarrett was the first sign of new SDW. It's ability which is actually similar to Boomerang Dragon as it goes into the soul of a Neodragon after it attacks a monster. No other benefits except an extra large soul. But in combo with The Over you've got a totally different animal. In fact it's pretty good with Jackknife items as well. Not a bad card seeing as Onebarrett is a size 0 too. Next on the list is Dragonarms, Emergence which can be placed in soul from hand at the cost of one life during a battle against your Neodragon. It's nice enough to be honset but it too is only to fill up the soul for defence. No extra benefits except for keeping your monsters around. But this isn't for budget decking is it? What happened to the essentials? Well here we go. Jackknife exists again. Yup that's right! A new version was released for Jackknife in the form of the Star Dragoner, Jackknife! It's a R card and this means that the once expensive Jackknife deck can now be managable for budget deckers! Yayayayay! Star Dragoner, Jackknife is awesome with (5000/3/5000) and the cool ability to check the top three cards of the deck and put one card into the soul and the other two into the drop zone. Searching a card is really powerful for SDW because of those handy Dragonarms. The other upside is that former Jackknife gets an easy boost for them. Not only is Jackknife decent, he gets easy-to-get-ahold-of support too! The first comes in a particular set of Dragonarms called Jackarms. The first of these cards are also only for keeping Jack alive but do work with those Jackknife weapons. The first card is Jackarms, J-Thruster. Basically when you put this card into the soul of Jack you search you deck for another copy of J-Thruster and add it to the soul. That's pretty good but you'd run four of them if you run Star Dragoner, Jackknife (really why wouldn't you?). The second card is an offensive card which combos well with Dragonarms which give Jackknife Penetrate. Jackarms, J-Thruster is a monster of a card which gives Jackknife an extra critical! Simple as that! The second most expensive card for new Jackknife? Star Jack Repair is a RR card which can only be cast if Jackknife is on the field. It gives you one gauge and then becomes the soul of a Neodragon. That's pretty good and it can bolster any Jackknife build. Now on to the RRR Jackknife card, an Impact monster known as Jackknife "Full Liberate Cannon!". This card is definetly a good card and it's an Impact Monster! This card is awesome because you call it over a monster taking all the Dragonarms and souls for it. Once it attacks you may get rid of up to 3 Dragonarms and deal damage equal to the amount of Dragonarms you got rid of from the soul. All of the add extra soul Dragonarms it's gonna be crazy. That said these are the ideal builds. What if you can't get those cards? I'll discuss that next time on my blog. Till next time... The Golem Category:Blog posts